On the Yard (15 page)

“That's cool. You could say I was the most outstanding example of complete and total rehabilitation you ever laid eye to.”

“Why don't you tell them?” Erlenmeyer suggested.

“Shit, they know I lie. I've used every shuck there is, and some I made up myself.” Red grinned, his yellow eyes flickering. “I even got religion once. I steady schemed on that church. Got saved every Sunday, and squeezed that Bible till I near wore it to tatters. Domino, they gave me a parole behind it. I was supposed to join some missionary outfit, but I got sidetracked somehow in Frisco. Another time I went in heavy for Alcoholics Anonymous, not that I ever did much drinking, but I couldn't remember my name. Then I volunteered for some medical experiment where they shot us full of bugs, then tried to cure us. They said I made the bugs sick. So now I figure I got just one shuck left, but it's the biggest shuck there is ...” Red paused smiling.

“Yes?” Erlenmeyer said.

“No shuck at all. They won't know what to think.”

Zekekowski spoke up. “If you're reduced to telling the truth, you're in serious trouble.”

Red nodded, “I'd say that was as plain as the balls on a tall dog.”

“You better tell them you love the Pilgrim fathers, Nathan Hale, the Unknown Soldier, Donald Duck, and every other lump of humanity down to the last shivering bushman, that's what you better do, and—”

“Really, Dr. Erlenmeyer, must we listen to this primitive cynicism every week?”

Watson had finally spoken. Formerly a mild-mannered and mother-smothered high school teacher, he had killed his two small sons, attempted to kill his wife, cut his own throat, then poisoned himself, all because his wife had refused a reconciliation with the remark, “John, the truth is you bore me.”

Watson stood with culture, the Republic, and Motherhood, and at least once each meeting he made a point of reaffirming his position before launching into his chronic criticism of the manner in which his own case had been, was, and would be handled. “... and I've been confined almost two years now, and I see no point in further imprisonment, further therapy, no point whatsoever since there's absolutely no possibility I'll do the same thing again ...”

“That's right,” Red said softly. “He's run out of kids.”

And Zeke whispered, “I just wish he'd taken the poison
before
he cut his throat.”

Watson ignored the whispering, if he heard it at all, and went on, clearly speaking only to Erlenmeyer. “Surely, Doctor, as a college man yourself you must realize that the opportunities for a meaningful cultural exchange are sorely limited in an institution of this nature. Of course, I attend the General Semantics Club and I'm taking the course Oral McKeon is giving in Oriental religions, but these are such tiny oases in this desert of sweatsuits and domino games, and I can't understand why everyone is just thrown together without reference to their backgrounds, or the nature of their offense. Thieves, dope addicts, even sex maniacs—”

Zeke threw his hands up in mock alarm. “Where'd you see a sex maniac?”

“I don't think it cause for facetiousness,” Watson said coldly. “Just yesterday I found occasion to step into the toilet off the big yard and one of the sweepers was standing there masturbating into the urinal.”

“That's horrible,” Zeke said. “What'd you do?”

“I left, of course.”

“Naturally. It violates the basic ideals of Scouting.”

“That's just Bubbles,” Red said. “He's in there all the time. But he ain't hardly taking his hank, cause he ain't got no nuts. Cut em off himself with a razor blade.” Red smiled as he watched Watson turn pale.

“I don't believe that,” Watson said.

“Ask Bubbles if you can take a look. He'll show you.”

Watson shifted in his chair so he wouldn't have to look at Red, and Red figured he was shut up for another week.

“Does anyone remember what we were on when the hour ended last week?” Erlenmeyer asked.

Juleson sensed his face growing bland as he avoided the therapist's eyes. No one answered his question.

“Wasn't Paul about to tell us why he fought with his wife?” Erlenmeyer leaned forward to look into Juleson's face. “Do you want to go on?”

The class turned to watch Juleson. For months Erlenmeyer had been prodding him to discuss something he didn't even want to think about, and their subtle conflict had created a certain small suspense. They were curious as to what Juleson would say, what they might hear him admit to if he ever did open up.

“You did fight?” Erlenmeyer asked.

“Yes, we fought.”

“What over?”

“Anything. Pick something. We could find some way to fight about it.”

“Did you fight often?”

“After the first year.”

“What was the underlying cause?”

“If I'd known that,” Juleson said, a stain of bitterness in his voice, “she'd be alive today.”

“What do you think now?”

“We weren't much alike. Maybe we were at first, but we were just passing each other, moving in different directions. The longer we were together the worse it got. Like strangers in the same house. Neither of us had anything the other wanted any more, and we both pretended it wasn't like that, but neither of us fooled the other, or even ourselves. It was bad. Very bad.”

“Then why didn't you leave her?” Erlenmeyer asked gently.

“I didn't want to. No, I couldn't. I don't know why, but I couldn't.”

“I think that's a question you should learn to answer.”

“It's hard to see how the answer could help much any more. She's going to stay dead.”

“It could help you. Your life isn't over.”

But Juleson couldn't quite believe his life wasn't over, that his life hadn't ended with Anna Marie's, kicked out of him by his own feet as hers had been. He reached for a cigarette, and then automatically offered the pack to Zekekowski. He looked up to find Society Red smiling at him with sly speculation and he experienced a twinge of uneasiness as he recalled the cool mockery with which Oberholster had questioned his keys. For that matter, why hadn't he removed the useless keys? Another question to answer.

Erlenmeyer was still watching him from the round tan ambush of his glasses. No more, Juleson begged silently. No more. He lit his cigarette, then held the match for Zekekowski, noting again how finely formed Zekekowski's hands were, actually beautiful, the hands of a ... of an arsonist, as it happened.

Then Bernard, who had sat through hour after hour without ever having made a comment, unless the quality of his silence might itself be taken for a single, sustained shout of resentment, finally spoke up to ask in a strong country voice if they could force a man on parole to live with his wife.

“You don't want to go home to her?”

“I guess I don't.”

“Why is that?”

“I heard some stuff. One of my homeboys come in last week, he told me.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Told me she's been putting out,” Bernard said, staring at the floor. “To my buddies.”

“They don't sound like the kind of buddies a man needs.”

“Ain't their fault. If it's pushed up to them, they're going to take it, wouldn't matter if it was the President's old lady, but you tell me how I'm supposed to go out there and look them in the eye, knowing all the time I was laying up in this jailhouse they was sticking my old lady?”

Erlenmeyer didn't try to answer this question. Instead he got Bernard to admit that if his wife were in the hospital for a long time, Bernard would probably be unfaithful to her, and while he was quick enough to spring Erlenmeyer's trap, he was equally quick to maintain that this was different.

“It's different with a man. Any man figures to get something strange ever' once in a while. That's nature.”

“Exactly how is it different?”

“Christalmighty, if you don't know, how the hell am I s'posed to tell you? It's different, that's all. A woman's s'posed to stay to home, not go flashing round no honkytonks by herself, taking up with the first stud who'll buy her a beer. Now, what the hell kind of woman is that? You want a woman like that?”

“But your wife wasn't like that when you were home with her, was she?”

“I guess she wasn't.”

“So, when you're home again why wouldn't it be the same?”

“Not goddam likely. She's got a taste for cheating by now, much dick as she's been getting put to her. Prob'ly has to cross her legs to keep her guts from falling out. I don't want it. I wouldn't piss on her. Not after she shamed me with my buddies. Not if she was the last woman on earth.”

Erlenmeyer was looking at his watch. “Well, I'm sure the parole authorities will let you live by yourself if this is still what you want to do when the time comes. And that's it for now. I'll see you all next week.”

Juleson finished the day at his desk, and at the four o'clock whistle gathered his books and joined the crowd heading for the blocks. He found his cell partner, dressed in new blues now, already waiting for the bar to be thrown.

“How did it seem today?” Juleson asked.

Manning smiled, apparently glad to see him. “Better,” he said, “but—I guess the word I want is ‘alien.'”

“When it no longers seems alien, you'll know you've heard too many bells.”

“Too many bells?”

“Just an expression—another way of saying you've done too much time.”

The block bell rang, as if on cue to aid Juleson's illustration, and the bars were thrown. They entered the cell. “Go ahead and wash up, I'll wait until you're through,” Juleson said, still unconsciously acting as a host. While he was waiting he continued reading. He read steadily, except for the time it took to go to the mess hall and eat, until seven, when he lowered his book to his chest and went to sleep.

He had one of his rare dreams of mastery in which he was engaged to a popular young television star—a girl so young their relationship would have seemed grotesque in the waking world. His entree to her had been his musical talent, and when at one point he sat down to a piano he was surprised to discover he could play it, but, even in the dream, he was embarrassed to find himself playing “The Flight of the Bumblebee.” He played it
bravura
, watching his hands reaching for chords his mind could not foresee. He expected at any moment that his hands would betray him, that the Bumblebee would disintegrate into musical gibberish, but he finished firmly and sat listening to the applause.

Then without transition, he was kissing the girl, apparently for the first time because she drew back to tell him, “Don't move your head so.” And she mimicked his style of kissing with cruel precision. He kissed her again, pressing his open mouth hard into hers. The moment widened without effort, both of them motionless, and when they parted he was unmoved, but she looked up at him with soft eyes.

—With the lights off, she said.

Someone came up at this point to ask him to play the piano again, and he started to go with them, but the girl pouted.

—I want Paul to kiss me with the lights off. He never has.

He woke up. As the mood of the dream slipped away he recognized it as adolescent in its coloring, and he felt a nostalgic longing for that lost country whose heightened values had poisoned his adult life by exposing its drabness.

He climbed from his bunk to get a drink of water, and noticed Manning lying on his back staring up at the springs. “How do you feel tonight?”

“I'm not sick,” Manning said.

“If you start to get sick, raise a holler, I'll start banging on the bars again.”

“I'm not going to get sick. I'll be all right.”

“Good.”

As Juleson was drinking, he noticed Sanitary Slim pass by on the tier, his eyes restlessly invading each cell, and he thought briefly of Lorin. And then of Zeke. For a moment his original hatred of the prison pressed against the layers of his studied indifference.

L
ORIN WAS
celled alone by order of the psych department, and in his three years of confinement this was the only time the meddling of the psych department had pleased him. Now he no longer needed to practice the tedious maneuvers necessary to quiet and evade a cell partner's curiosity as to the nature of “all them funny marks” he filled his notebooks with. His photo albums were secure from prying and insensitive eyes. His poems unread, undefiled.

He sat writing, his paper supported on an unfinished piece of plywood. He wrote:
This box is in a box, which is in another —infinite to the nausea of great space
.

He paused and began to chew the end of his pencil. It was a new pencil and flecks of yellow paint stuck to his lips. That evening in the dining room he had overheard someone make the comment that he looked like Kim Novak. The recollection slipped from the back of his mind, and again he blushed painfully.

He began to write again:
Yet I am free—free as any to test the limits of my angry nerves and press the inner pains of my nature against the bruise of time
.

The pencil found its way back to his mouth—having recorded one thought it needed to be charged with another. Again someone whispered: Kim Novak. And another added: Ain't she looking good. Consciously he pictured his brain as a large oyster coating this irritation with the luster of a pearl. But his thoughts were lifeless, pale beside the vigor of his shame. He sighed and removed the pencil from his mouth. The aftertaste of cedar reminded him to wipe his lips. Then he dated his entry.

He heard the noise of the lower tiers showering and the scene came to him like a tableau from Dante. He saw two hundred men trying to shower in facilities that wouldn't have been adequate for twenty, a writhing tangle of soapy bodies struggling for a place under the shower heads like piglets fighting for access to one of their mother's tits. Lorin erased the image as too wholesome. He saw a knot of worms pulled from a bait can.